A French company had been working on the canal in Panama since 1881,
while the U.S. investigated the possibility of building a canal across
Nicaragua. A.B. Nichols was a division engineer in charge of surveys for a
Nicaragua canal route for the U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission from 1899 to
1901. After the Republic of Panama seceded from Colombia and signed a
treaty with the United States in 1903, the Isthmian Canal Commission
assumed authority over the Panama Canal Zone, and in May 1904, A.B.
Nichols was appointed to the Panama Canal service. In that same month, the
French property on the Isthmus was formally transferred to the Americans,
and by September 1904, there were 1,800 workers on site. A.B. Nichols
continued to work in the Canal Zone until 1914, when the Panama Canal was
completed. His engineering notebooks, including manuscript notes,
typescripts, photographs, blueprints, maps, charts, and scrapbooks,
provide a firsthand account of the building of the Panama Canal.

The photograph on the left shows the
headquarters building of the Compagnie Universal du Canal Interoceanique.